The present invention relates in general to home garden seed planters for use primarily by the suburban gardener for discharging vegetable seeds or flower seeds of various types at predetermined intervals along a row or furrow.
The preparation of suburban home garden plots is a tedious slow problem without equipment to faciliate the laying out and forming of the portions of the garden plot for receiving the seeds and the depositing of the seeds at the proper spacing, and then filling in of the dirt over the seeds in the garden row. For example, it involves laying out and formation of shallow, equally spaced furrows for receiving the seeds, followed by manually depositing the seeds one at a time at desired spacing in the various furrows, and then filling in of the furrows to return the removed dirt back into the shallow furrows over the seeds. Very little progress has been made in developing relatively simple, economical and sturdy devices aiding the suburban home gardener in carrying out these functions in a home vegetable garden, notwithstanding many advances in expensive and complicated commercial farming equipment for large planting operations.
Some types of home garden seed depositing implements have been proposed for row planting, one of which comprises a seed container mounted for rotation on a wheel journaled at the bottom of a long handle, wherein the seed container is provided with a plurality of openings which deposit a seed each time an opening reaches the bottom of the container as the wheel is rolled along the ground. Another similar device is shown in earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,031,984, which is provided with a furrow-forming, small plough-like formation and an associated wheel which trails at a desired spaced location behind the furror former, together with a pair of overlapping cylindrical rims of confronting interfitted cupshaped seed containers having shaped openings in the overlapping flanges or rims through which the seeds are dispensed. However, improvement is desired in the simplicity, reduction in expense of manufacture and ability to discharge vegetable seeds of different types.
An object of the present invention, therefore, is the provision of a simple, inexpensive seed planter for use by the suburban gardener, which is formed of a novel combination of inexpensive parts providing a rotatable wheel-like seed holder and periodic dispenser structure rotatably mounted on the lower end portion of a long rigid handle, designed to discharge single seeds at regular intervals of about 4 inches as the device is rolled along the prepared garden row.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of a novel seed planter as described in the immediately preceding paragraph, wherein the seed holder is of simple funnel-shaped construction having a removable cork or the like in the narrower end opening at the free end of the small diameter tapered neck or stem portion, associated with a seed discharge disc and apertured seed tab disc for regulating discharge of the seeds.
Other objects, advantages and capabilities of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings illustrating a preferred embodiment of the invention.